Written by Steve Juras then Illustrated by Kyle Fletcher. Foreword written by Michael Kiser.

Many people are allergic to creative input — obsessed with originality and individual esteem. 

A mysterious protein enters the body and the hypersensitive immune system reacts with hives, swelling, a goddamn asthma attack. So we are with pictures, words, ideas from other people that might influence our own creativity. 

At DissMag, we take a different route. We consume. We expose ourselves to the venom of unknown creative expression, and force it down our throats. This is how we write and illustrate each article, and it’s how we treat our selected contributors. Wether each article begins in words or pictures, we treat it all like indeterminate protein. 

And so, with this in mind, we bring you a bony, grizzled, deep fried piece of work from Steve Juras that we chewed on for awhile, and finally choked down. Given the option to submit words or pictures first, he chose words — and Kyle Fletcher created images in the fever-like state that it induced. 

Steve Juras
Interim Cultural Liason
The Swiderski Institute

humbly presents

#6: A Lesson in Subconscious:  A brief series of sketches for the DissMag reader

Anticipated FAQ: From the start I can already tell that there’s a high probability of this being one of those pretentious, self-reflexive jerk-off pieces. Am I right?

Pre-prepared Answer: Thanks so much for the quick and perceptive question!

We’ll say this: You’ll get the most consumer satisfaction out of this exercise by considering it a series of exploratory, lo-res sketches rather than a comprehensive high-def picture of a systematic idea. Comprehension won’t be automatic but rest assured there’s plenty of legible lines drawn, enough raw data presented to achieve a modicum of clarity. Because honestly, given such terms as “inspiration” and “automation” by the editors of this esteemed digital publication, any attempt at exhaustive definition is the kind of fool’s errand that usually ends up in tears and gnashing of teeth.

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A hypothetical paper edit of video footage from David Foster Wallace’s 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College* for the purposes of bracketing ideas of automation, freedom and the self:

A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. (CUT) Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute centre of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. (CUT) It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. (CUT) Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real - you get the idea. (FREEZE FRAME) But please don’t worry that I’m getting ready to preach to you about compassion or other-directedness or the so-called “virtues”. (FREEZE FRAME) This is not a matter of virtue - it’s a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centred, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self (CUT)

* This piece has beenso inspiring to so many people after the fact of Wallace’s death that it’s now available as a hardcover book called This is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life (Little, Brown and Company, 2009).

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The only way to swallow the following is to imagine it delivered at an impossibly-titled academic conference (like “Hegemony of (fill-in-the-blank)”) by a nervous English Literature grad student specializing in something equally impossible-sounding (like “post-colonial reader response theory”) who senses that there’s possibly a shred of truth underneath all of the intellectual gymnastics:

…

Inspiration and automation are but two moments in a specific creative process, not antithetical stances toward creative production in general. Meditation upon these concepts suggests that said process is not one of unfettered self-expression but an experience of self-disruption and dissociation.

Inspiration (and feel free to substitute “intuition” or “the unconscious” here) accidentally disrupts our on-line perceptual default, the state of continual acquisition, consumption, digestion and expulsion of data in which the contemporary Self exists. The moment of inspiration is rupturous, opening up a space for the unknown, the marginalized Other, to emerge (however briefly). This transitory experience of the unknown is a disruptive catalyst, initiating artistic exploration beyond the confines of the existing cognitive register.

If we maintain that this inspiration happens “in a flash” then automation happens deliberately over a proscribed length of time in a systematic and certain fashion. In purely industrial terms, it looks to control and maximize time, energy and resources by removing the human hand. Converted to aesthetic terms, automation is a sure-fire strategy used artists to erase any expression of self from the artistic product in order for pure concept or form to emerge.

…

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Notes for an installation idea inspired by research for this piece:

On a temporary wall, roughly nine feet wide and six feet tall, are pinned unlined four by six inch index cards in a carefully constructed grid. When read left to right the cards form a crude storyboard for a sci-fi buddy cop film called To Be Determined.* The first three rows depict dialogue sequences between Descordo and Spinaza, the film’s main characters. The rest are packed with bits of art direction scrawled in a cramped, compact hand and overlap heavily xeroxed images of mall-based eyeware franchises. Lazily drifting atop roughly one third of the wall and spilling out onto the floor is a ragged piece of tracing paper. On it is a series of CAD drawings for a variable focal length camera lens with an incredibly shallow depth of field.

* If a treatment for this film existed it would certainly: 1) describe TBD as a cross between My Dinner with Andreand What’s Up, Tiger Lily?; 2) establish that each main character suspects the other of being a robot controlled by an astigmatic, chess playing meth dealer named Slappy; and 3) set a crucial shoot-out sequence in a Sign of the Beefcarver, the suburban Detroit eatery frequented mostly by cataractal senior citizens and renowned for baked scrod and butterscotch pudding.

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Transcript of imagined conversation between editors of Diss Mag and author of this piece upon submitting final draft: 

DM: (inaudible) 

TSI: Because the writing’s not straight ahead, really. Formal composition’s just not the preferred way of making sense of things. (cough) It’s more like a sketch artist…the eye—or hand—recording, like, uh, outlines and contours.

DM: (inaudible)

TSI: Exactly. Stems from respect for the craft in general and it’s more, shall we say, polished practitioners. But mostly from self-awareness. We fully acknowledge the method as seemingly indeterminate and somewhat impenetrable. (sneeze) But whatever. Anything worthwhile rarely’s automatic.

DM: (cell phone rings and door slams)

TSI: Nope. ‘Tis no excuse for shoddy workmanship. It’s honesty. It’s a transparent dissociative act to, ah, annihilate any… any… serious “writerly” expectations to find a fertile ground. Aaaaa, some, some common room to…an open space to play around with things.

DM: (inaudible)*

TSI: Touché. Without this room not much would happen…besides endless critique and self-loathing.

DM: (laughter)

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END.